Meeting eyes with him, Olivia, whose lips had split and burst apart, asked, flicking her tongue.

“Who are you?”

Holding the sword high, as if he would strike her neck immediately, the man grinned with the corners of his mouth torn open.

“You… Who are you?”

Although Olivia was now looking directly at his face, the man’s face was strangely deformed, except for the grotesque mouth.
As if entranced, Olivia raised her mashed face and blinked.

She tightly clenched the torn edge of her skirt and forced her exhausted legs to move.

Trembling, Olivia, standing up, pointed directly at the man who was spreading his sword and laughing, putting strength into every word.

“You are not Kraye.”

The next moment, Olivia opened her eyes wide as if she had been splashed with cold water.

“Ugh!”

“…Olivia, Olivia!”

Continuously calling my name, Kraye’s face, embracing me, blurred.

In Olivia’s unfocused eyes, a worriedly distorted face appeared unexpectedly without focus.

Kraye gently wiped Olivia’s lifeless cheek with his trembling hands.

“Are you awake?”

Though still deathly pale, unlike a moment ago when even her breath momentarily stopped, warmth was gradually returning, albeit faintly.

As Olivia’s blurred blue eyes mixed with the crimson eyes, she mumbled through her parted lips, but the only sound coming out was the hushed breath between the swaying wheat field.

“Ol…ivia?”

Realizing that her heartbeat was becoming increasingly abnormal, Kraye, who was cradling Olivia, tightened his arms that had been loosely holding her.

“Uh, h-huuh.”

However, Olivia’s condition worsened.

Her heart pounded like a mad colt, and tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill at any moment.

“Olivi…”

Responding to Kraye’s call that penetrated the pounding of her heart, Olivia struggled to regain her composure.

She knew that something was seriously wrong with her current state.

And she knew why her body, which had started to tremble feebly, was acting this way.

Olivia bit her lip until the flesh inside her mouth crumbled.

She knew that the present Kraye by her side was different from the one in her past life.

She also knew that he wouldn’t harm her.

Although he was fearsome, she wasn’t afraid that he would kill her as before.

He had sworn to her.

However, the instinctive fear of death engraved in her from the past, or rather, the future that hadn’t come yet, didn’t disappear.

“Aaah! Aak! Aaah!”

He swallowed her up.

Olivia, crazily struggling to break free, clawed and bit at his arms holding her as if possessed.

Due to her desperate attempts, Kraye’s sleeves around his arms were torn to shreds, revealing scars on his body in the process.

But Kraye didn’t let her go.

He just carefully adjusted his strength to ensure Olivia didn’t get hurt, patiently waiting for her struggles to subside.

In the empty park where not even the sound of insects could be heard, only Olivia’s screams echoed. How much time had passed?

“Ha… Haa, Ha. Haa, haa.”
Breathing heavily, Olivia hung limply from Kraye’s arms, and Kraye silently swept his hand over her back.

Gradually, the voice that had been choked between Olivia’s lips, as if her neck had been snapped, flowed out.

“Ma, magic, it was…?”

The bizarre phenomenon that had occurred in the park, which she had complained about being inexplicable, was nothing more than an illusion.

Moreover, it was an illusion vividly displaying each person’s most feared and detested things.

If it wasn’t magic causing such phenomena, then what could it be?

What kind of terrifying magic was this, as if taken from a novel?

Brushing aside the hair sticking to Olivia’s cheek, Kraye tilted his head while embracing her.

“Ah…no? Not magic?”

“Yeah.”

Embracing Olivia, he gestured towards the floor, and Olivia, with her eyes, found a severely damaged device, unrecognizable in its original form.

“It’s not magic; it’s a trap. It emitted a specific scent in such a small amount that it was almost imperceptible. If it induced that level of hallucination, it must have been extremely toxic. It’s hard to gauge the timing, but it’s definitely not recent.”

Fixing Olivia, whose neck was increasingly drooping, Kraye continued speaking.

“Originally, it would have been a trap activated when entering a specific location. However, as the device was left unattended for a long time, it deteriorated, and the scent inside leaked out, causing this bizarre phenomenon.”

“Ah… If it’s something like this, then it’s impossible to describe exactly what happened. Since everyone who experienced it would have said something different.”

Olivia, letting out a dry laugh in disappointment, tapped his arm in a cramped manner.

“Let go a bit.”

After observing her for a moment, Kraye slowly released his grip, and Olivia, who sat down on the floor however she liked, took deep breaths, inflating her chest multiple times.

Looking at the completely destroyed device, Olivia, whose stiff eyes blinked, tilted her head.

“Come to think of it, if it was a machine, the scent would have dissipated when it vibrated.”

“I got rid of the scent before smelling it.”

“G…ot rid of it? How did you get rid of the scent? It doesn’t seem like the wind happened to blow at just the right moment.”